WA Gov Court Case: Taking Stock

As we enter Week Two of the Rossi Court Case, which Rossi hopes will crown him Governor when all is said and done, this is a good time to take stock of where things are at the mid-way point of the trial.

My take is that you'd almost have to wonder if there is any trial going on judging by the spin zone emanating from the conservative blogosphere. The comments being made by Rossi supporters are hardly based on the realities of the trial as it has unfolded so far, and more an indication of just how desperate this bunch is becoming. While Judge Bridges has made ruling after ruling that allows for Republicans to introduce their "evidence", Seattle Times writer David Postman points out the rulings' greater significance:

There's no question that Bridges' rulings through the first five days of trial have almost exclusively benefited Republicans. But that may not be good news for Republicans.

There's a belief among attorneys that a judge who thinks one side is likely to win will rule in favor of the other on evidentiary and procedural motions. That's to reduce the likelihood that the case will be reversed due to a technical error, said University of Washington Law School professor Robert Aronson.

"But decisions like that have been known to backfire," he said. The trial judge could be swayed if enough unfavorable evidence gets in, including some that should have been excluded.

Aronson said that's more likely to happen with a jury trial. A judge in a bench trial — as this one is — need not worry as much about what evidence is admitted because he is a legal expert and can analyze it better than a jury of laypeople.

Nevertheless, just as during the counting process Rossi's PR engine tried to spin a "We Won Two Of The Three Counts" strategy, the die-hards cling to hope by looking at the surface of things, and not their deeper meaning. Meanwhile, GOP leaders are clearly less optimistic in their public statements, and their attorneys are pretty much crossing their fingers that the burden of proof that Rossi would have won this election were it not for various vote tabulation problems is kept at a low level.

Then there is the misguided outrage at one of these conservative blogs at Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat for a column he wrote last week in which he took the GOP to task for a sham of a trial based on fraud allegations they could not back up in court. Westneat himself chimes in at the end of the comment thread to further defend his claim:

Even though I think the entire analysis is flawed (for the reasons stated above), just for illustration let's play it out. The GOP is implying, for example, that if there's a negative accounting discrepancy (i.e. more voters recorded as voting than there are absentee ballots recorded as cast), then that means someone probably either destroyed some ballots or lost them on purpose or just failed to count them on purpose, in an effort to tilt the election. And yet 70 percent of those errors occurred in precincts won by Gregoire. So by GOP logic, 70 percent of the mail-in ballots destroyed or lost in King County were in pro-Gregoire precincts. This is fraud to tilt the election to Gregoire? It makes no sense.

Beyond this, I would note that GOP lawyers say they have no other evidence of ballot stuffing -- no eyewitness accounts, no rumors even, no mangled ballots, no ballots with fishy signatures, no ballots made out to false names, etc. They also have no theory on how the ballot box stuffing could have happened -- they have no how, where, when, what or by whom. They don't even have any speculation about these things.

It's irresponsible to walk into a courtroom and accuse people of ballot box stuffing when this is all you've got.

Yet, this has been the GOP's game all along. This case was all about creating doubt in the public's mind about the legitimacy of Christine Gregoire's Governorship, while hoping something might turn up to make their case of election fraud. But nothing has turned up, and all this week the Democrats will be demonstrating again and again, that while there were definitely problems, they were hardly due to fraud, or confined to King County, and cannot be shown to have only benefitted Gregoire. However, winning the court case should not be the only thing the Democrats concern themselves with. They also need to win the court of opinion. So far the GOP has relentlessly attacked Gregoire, trying to tarnish what has been quite a successful and productive first five months.

It is time that Rossi be held accountable for taking this case as far as he has for nothing but his own political gain. Knowing the lack of any evidence of fraud, he should have thrown in the towel before the case ever got to court, and spared the State the cost in dollars, and the expense in goodwill. In fact, I believe Rossi would have come across smelling like roses had he magnanimously stepped aside and accepted the result. Instead he already smells like a titan arum, and that stink is going to stick with the GOP for years to come. (nwphtt48)